Chemins de la Liberté – The Path to Freedom: Resistance and Remembrance

This is the house where André Guidi and his wife Hélène Lamorthe – and later their son, Georges Guidi – took in pre-tuberculosis children. It was a safe haven for Jewish youngsters during the war.

The people of Prélenfrey saved the lives of 51 Jews, including 20 children, during the Second World War. All the inhabitants stayed silent as the German army passed through the area. The children were hidden in the preventorium belonging to the Guidi family, who passed them off as young tuberculosis patients when the Germans searched the area, saving them from deportation.

Some 100 soldiers from the 157th Reserve Division of the German army invaded the village on July 22, 1944. All the men aged 16 to 60 were rounded up and taken from their homes or the surrounding forest and fields. They were lined up for hours with their faces against the school wall with a machine gun pointing at them. The members of the Resistance who had been informed on were separated from the rest of the group and moved close to the village pond.Thirty-two hostages, escorted by the German soldiers, were taken down to Saint-Barthélemy on foot, where a bus transported them to the Bonne barracks in Grenoble. Almost all the hostages were set free on July 26 after being interrogated several times. 

The preventorium, which accommodated pre-tuberculosis children, dates back to 1933.The Lamorthe-Guidi family housed over 50 children who were in good health, including the sons and daughters of Resistance fighters and Jews, hiding them among the sick patients. On July 22, 1944, the Germans wanted to search the premises. Anne Wahl was a nurse who spoke their language, and she made the soldiers afraid that they would be infected so they would not visit all the rooms and nobody would be arrested.

From here you can see the cabin known as the Baraque des Clos above the forest. When Jo Guidi was warned that the Germans were coming, he took the children up here who had been hiding in the preventorium that he was in charge of. As soon as Madame Reynard hung her white sheets outside, it meant that the danger had passed and the children could come back down to Prélenfrey.

The 8th FTP battalion trained and hid weapons in the hamlet of Les Vincents. But the Germans discovered the location, burning it to the ground in July 1944 and stealing the cattle. Some of the men from the village were arrested, deported or shot. There is a panel here that pays tribute to them.